The newly founded feminist and LGBTQIA+ journal Mai is seeking contributions to its special edition, which revolves around ‘Feminist and Queer Perspectives on Sex in Contemporary Film and TV’. /Mai/ is a new journal founded and edited by Anna Backman Rogers (Senior Lecturer in Feminist Philosophy and Visual Culture, University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and is named after the Swedish feminist filmmaker Mai Zetterling. The journal aims to become the basis for an intersectional feminist and queer collective of scholars, writers, artists and activists. We are hoping for the edition to be published by March 2018, and we are also keen on receiving a range of papers, and other experimental pieces, which can be defined by contributors. Conventional or standard academic papers should be 5,000 – 6,000 words in length, although we will consider some shorter pieces of 3,000 words. Other pieces, such as interviews for instance, should aim to stick to this word limit too (5-6,000 words). For the sake of this edition, ‘contemporary’ can also be loosely defined by those who submit papers, but generally means media texts released after 2000.

Papers may centre on:

  • How contemporary Film and TV is stylistically or narratively representing sex.
  • What role sex plays within genre or narrative more broadly.
  • How different film/TV cultures use or represent sex to tell a story or to further character development.
  • The political ramifications of screening sex.
  • Ethical considerations of screening sex.
  • The connection between socio-cultural factors and industrial shifts in relation to screening sex.
  • Inter-sections of sex, sexuality and gender.
  • Sex in relation to masculinity and femininity.
  • Audiences and watching sex.
  • ‘Alternative’ representations of sex in Film and TV and the importance of these sexual images.
  • ‘Queer Sex’
  • BDSM, Kink and ‘Othering’ the sex act.
  • Heteronormative, hetero-centric or homonormative representations of sex.
  • How the history of sex on-screen has affected present depictions.
  • The relationship between pornography and sex in mainstream film/TV.
  • The relationship between sex in cinema and sex on TV.

Abstracts should be 200 – 250 words, and should also include a short bio. The deadline for abstracts is 31st July 2017, with successful contributors being contacted by 28th August 2017, and then a copy of the paper should be sent to the editors by January 15th 2018, to then be peer-reviewed and edited.

Please email abstracts to: Connor.Winterton@mail.bcu.ac.uk (guest editor) and please feel free to get in touch with any informal enquiries with Anna Backman Rogers: Anna.Backman.Rogers@gu.se

 

Selected Publications:

American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and The Crisis Image /(EUP 2015)
Feminisms, co-edited with Laura Mulvey (AUP 2015)
Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure (Berghahn 2017)
Female Authorship and the Documentary Image: Theory, Practice and Aesthetics, co-edited with Boel Ulfsdotter (EUP 2017)
Female Agency and Documentary Strategies: Subjectivities, Identity, and Activism, co-edited with Boel Ulfsdotter (EUP 2017)